Beauty

From BBC’s new podcasting experiment I started to listen to the Radio 4 program In our Time, specifically the one concerning Beauty. Some great concepts on the Philosophy of Beauty, and in turn Art, reality and well everythign really.

Some concepts I picked up on from the program:

Art is created due to our desire to re-create beauty we see and experience around us. However this rasies the question about the nature of beuty, art and reality.

Plato – An object is beautiful to the extent that it participates in the Idea, or Form, of beauty.

Aristotle – Beauty is the gift of God

Is beauty inherent in the object or simply objective, as in the beholder?

Hegel – Beauty, Feeling, Knowledge have a rational, cognitive value. For through Religion, Art and Philosophy the members of a People can mutually recognize their feeling, beauty and knowledge. Essentially Art will dwindle in its effectiveness as we move closer to ‘reality’.